Queen: Roger Taylor, frustration with the sound of the first album
The 50th anniversary of Queen’s debut album allowed Roger Taylor to address an old pet peeve: the sound of the drums. In the celebratory box set with the remastered tracks, demos and alternative versions of “Queen I”, modern technologies have finally given justice to the drummer’s contribution, who in a new video from the “Queen The Greatest” series recalled the difficulties faced in Trident Studios in London, where the group recorded their first album.
Taylor recounted how the famous “Trident sound”, dry and oppressive, was imposed on him, forcing him to use an unsuitable drum kit.
Before signing a contract, Queen recorded a demo at De Lane Lea Studios in Wembley, north London, in late 1971. Recordings included “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Liar”, “Jesus”, “Great King Rat” and “The Night Comes Down”, all re-recorded by the band when they moved to Trident in Soho to work on their debut album the following year.
“At De Lane Lea, we showed up and did what we could, and quickly”, we hear Roger Taylor say in the clip: “At Trident we felt like we were close to what we wanted, but I didn’t get along very well with their ideas. They had a drum booth and it was a well-known sound: very dry and dead, which was not what I wanted to hear the drums go ‘tum, patapum’ them. There was a cloth on anything and everything was taped down.”
He continued: “I didn’t even have my kit in there. I had to play this little shit kit. It was just awful. They told us: ‘This is the Trident sound’. But we didn’t want the Trident sound. We wanted our own sound. I had a really hard time playing that kit, which is why, actually, if you listen to the demos, which I played with my relatively cheap kit at De Lane Lea, they have a higher standard of drums. It’s quite challenging, but it makes sense. And it’s just better to listen to it.”
For the celebratory edition of “Queen I”, current technology made it possible to modify the drum sound itself to align it with what the band had always intended.
The video “The Greatest Special : The Story Of Queen I Episode 6 – Trident Drum Sound” available on YouTube explains the process in detail, and shares three samples of Taylor’s isolated drum tracks from side two opener “Liar.” , the De Lane Lea and Trident versions, as well as the remixed 2024 sound. “What we’ve done now with ‘Queen I’ is we’ve used all the actual recordings, but made them sound more like we wanted them to sound at the time,” says Taylor: “So it’s ‘live’, the drums are livelier and more ambient. So, to me, it’s a significant improvement, and I know Brian (May) feels the same way.”
